


all I want is to be home

by TheSoliloquy



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Friendship study, Gen, Grindelwald Fallout, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Road Trips, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoliloquy/pseuds/TheSoliloquy
Summary: The night Graves is released from the infirmary, Seraphina finds him sat outside her front door.“I sent you home hours ago.” She tells him, blandly..It's a strange and familiar thing, deciding how best to pull a friend back together when they've fallen apart.





	all I want is to be home

Graves doesn’t wake for weeks.

Not truly.

Seraphina watches him slide in and out, listens to low rambles on a thick tongue. Most days she can’t understand him. The words tangle together into streams of nothings, rumbles and groans of vague displeasure. On other days something can be grasped from the mess: abandoned sentences and half-formed words. Names. Seraphina’s own name startles her at first, here a whisper, there a mutter, until the sound of it is as common as the breeze rattling against the window panes.

Once or twice, Grindelwald’s name passes his lips. These are the worst days.

Seraphina makes his bedside her home.

Despite the stillness of the infirmary, the world outside hasn’t stopped moving. A fresh bureaucratic hell greets her each morning, as inevitable as the rising sun and unending as the darkening skies. But nobody dares bother her here.

That is until an elderly healer finds her one evening, pulls her outside, and tells her that her mother has died.

 _I’m so sorry_ , the healer says before she leaves. Seraphina does not acknowledge her.

-

Her mother is well-loved, well-known in Georgia. Down here folks don’t care about the government, don’t care she is the president when they cup her cheeks with dirt-stained hands.

Seraphina stands beside her brothers with soil clenched in her fist and watches it pour down onto the coffin below.

She is back in New York by the evening.

-

On the silent days, Seraphina finds herself watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.

(If- _when-_ Graves wakes, she’ll tell him she’s only there for the peace and quiet.

She’ll tell him that if he heard singing it will have been some voice in the New York wind, or some phantasm from the depths of his fever dreams. _I can’t remember the last time I sang_ , she’ll wonder aloud.

She’ll thank him not to accuse her of going soft. Seraphina is the President after all, completely in control of everything one could possibly control, herself included.

And he’ll look back at her with a small smile and let her keep her secrets.)

-

Work takes Seraphina away from New York for a while. She calls the newly-reinstated Porpentina ‘ _please-call-me-Tina’_ Goldstein into her office before she leaves and gives her thorough instructions on the Auror vetting process. Security around MACUSA has increased tenfold since Grindelwald, and Seraphina herself has been overseeing employee checks.

Goldstein, only barely more sufferable than she had been before, looks at her, confused.

“Madame President, I don’t understand.” She says, but only after Seraphina has finished, “I don’t have the authority to do this.”

“Yes,” Seraphina glances at Goldstein over her briefcase, “You do.”

( _I trust you_ , is what she doesn’t say. _I trust you to know what is right_. Even if her faith in Goldstein’s ability isn’t quite there yet. Trust is a hard thing for her to give, so the girl better not let her down.)

“One more thing, Goldstein. If anything changes with Graves, I am to be notified immediately.”

Neither of them are hopeful of much. The look on Tina’s face says it all; it’s been a month of no change and the healers are helpless as ever.

So, a mere week later, she is surprised to receive a very tired owl in the middle of a formal dinner.

Rudolph Spielman sips his wine pointedly when she is handed the letter. Perhaps any other President would apologise for the disturbance or excuse themselves. She ignores him entirely.

The letter, wet through from the journey and overly formal, reads:

_Dear Madame President,_

_I trust you are faring well on your journeys. We have been following your progress in the papers and look forward to your safe return._

_As you recall before your leave, you asked to be notified of any changes with Director Graves. I am pleased to inform you that he awoke this afternoon at approximately 3:20pm. He is quite responsive but will remain in the infirmary under the care of Healer Davis until further notice._

_Unfortunately the infirmary sustained some damage, and a few healers have had to be treated for minor injuries, but I’m sure that by your return everything will be back-_

Seraphina burns the letter and calls for a portkey.

-

She finds Graves shirtless in his infirmary bathroom.

He’s staring into the mirror, jaw lathered, a straight razor in his hand. The door creaks open at her touch.

Dark eyes flicker over to her reflection.

“You’ve caused quite the stir.” Seraphina says.

Light glints from the razor in erratic bursts. From here she can see that his hand is trembling. All of Graves’ weight rests on one leg, and as Seraphina steps towards him, slowly, leisurely, she sees the tell-tale creases of tension at the corners of his eyes. Pale lines run along his bare skin, snaking down his back, across his chest. Some scars she recognises, many she does not.

Seraphina meets his eyes in the mirror.

“You look like shit.” He tells her, voice raw from disuse.

His hair has grown unruly in his absence and illness, an uneven mess that just brushes his shoulders. Seraphina reaches up and tugs at a strand. Graves watches in the mirror, silent, as she rests her hand on the nape of his neck, thumb a hair’s breadth from a scar that creeps up and behind his ear like lightning.

“Any scissors in that bag?” She asks, strokes her thumb over the thrum of his pulse.

He smirks and hands her the razor.

-

“Our security measures need work.” Seraphina tells him. ( _I’m sorry_.)

“He left quite a mess.” ( _I missed you_.)

Graves sits quietly for all of this, face freshly shaven and eyes heavy lidded as she works from behind him, cutting away at his hair, lock by lock.

(She’s done this for him before, in the trenches of the Great War.

“You’d make a good barber.” He had told her.)

Seraphina prods him with questions as she works, asks him the last thing he remembers, how he was captured, how long he was in that suitcase. Every question is met with silence and the steady sound of his breathing.

Eventually she rounds the chair, throws the scissors into the sink, and turns on him. Graves meets her gaze readily, expression guarded. Slowly, Seraphina bends at the hip until they are eye to eye. Calloused brown fingers reach up to grip his jaw, his chin resting in her palm.

For decades they’ve been friends. These eyes are familiar to her. Peering into his face, flitting between one eye and the other, Seraphina isn’t sure what she’s expecting to find.

(Where is the change?)

“What happened to you?” She asks him, and in his eyes flicker pain, guilt, fear, anger. Seraphina can see more than crumbling walls.

Graves needn’t say a word.

-

The first time Graves broke past the Imperius curse, Grindelwald had laughed.

After the fifth, he broke every one of his fingers and stole his face.

He tells her all of this very calmly, eyes down as he traces patterns on the bathroom countertop. There aren’t any tell-tale scars on his hands, nothing to speak of the damage, but Seraphina has seen the tremors.

Graves is a gifted Occlumens. All Graves are; he had been taught to guard his mind at the same age Seraphina had been taught to guard her tongue. It was a quality that lent no small part to his success as an Auror, to his rise to Director.

And that enraged Grindelwald.

“He used to sit with me,” Graves tells her, “And tell me about his day.”

After his fingers, Grindelwald broke his wrists. He dislocated one shoulder, then the other. With each act of defiance, Grindelwald broke a rib. He shattered a knee as punishment for a kick. Graves’ jaw, he broke only because he refused to smile.

“He played music.”

“Music?”

Graves nods, eyes on his finger, still tracing. “He never turned it off.”

When Grindelwald had broken through into his mind, rummaged through every memory he had, it had been to the sound of his mother’s favourite song.

-

After she makes her Director what she calls ‘presentable’- a word that Graves scoffs at when she tells him so- Seraphina forces him back into bed with a firm hand and a helping shoulder.

When she steps away from the bed, his eyes watch her, impassive.

“You’re going?”

Seraphina doesn’t answer. She moves over to the door, watches in her periphery as Graves’ head follows her path. The guard at the door turns to her as she opens it.

“Ma’am?”

“Have Komai bring today’s missives down, please, Roger.” Seraphina looks back into the room and meets Graves’ eyes, glittering darkly in the lamplight, “And today’s crossword, as well.”

Graves raises a single eyebrow.

“Actually, Roger, better make that the entire month’s.”

-

Auror Goldstein corners her in the elevator two days later.

“Morning, Goldstein.” Seraphina greets smoothly, back ramrod straight, eyes ahead.

She can tell the younger woman isn’t there for the journey’s sake; the lift would be vibrating if Goldstein had her feet firmer on the ground.

“Madame President.” Goldstein ducks her head- _did she just bow?_ \- and wrings her hands. “I, er- I just wanted to ask after Mr Graves. I haven’t been able to visit since he woke up.”

Seraphina watches her from the corner of her eye. Goldstein had been a regular at the infirmary while Graves was indisposed. It was she who had found him in the first place, dragged him limp and bloody through the Woolworth building doors, a _sonorous_ pressed to her throat. Aurors have their duties, of course, which in these past few weeks involve more hours than an Auror has. But sometimes, when Seraphina finished a long day with a visit to the infirmary, she would find Graves peaceful and the scent of lavender fading from the air.

“He’s as well as can be expected, Auror Goldstein.”

A strange mixture of uncertainty, hope, and restraint flit across the woman’s face. By Goldstein’s elbow, Red looks disinterestedly at the wall.

“If you wish to visit him, I’m sure something can be arranged.”

“Oh, yes!” Goldstein’s face practically glows, “That would be fantastic if I could, ma’am. If Mr Graves wouldn’t mind, of course.”

“I’ll have a word.”

Seraphina offers the woman a quick, courteous nod, before the doors open and she sweeps out of the elevator

-

The next time Seraphina visits Graves, Tina is sat on the end of his bed, a chess board hovering between them.

There’s a small smile on his lips.

-

In true style, Graves is a much better patient unconscious.

He is not a cantankerous man, not by any means, but stubborn as an ox and charming as a Valentine’s potion when it suits him. Both of these qualities together, and Seraphina has an endless supply of memos beseeching her to order the Director to behave.

Many of the stories float up to Seraphina from the infirmary via healers and aurors and guards. The rest, she has the good fortune of witnessing herself.

There is, of course, the usual unwillingness to co-operate with the healers’ instructions. Dreamless potions are ignored, stitches torn from over-exertion, and even the strictest healers disarmed with a smile and a question about their family’s welfare. (“I was supposed to check sir’s pulse, next thing I know I’m telling him all about my Robert’s promotion!” one tells her, sounding a little too impressed for Seraphina’s liking). It escalates to the point where, when Seraphina gifts him with a cane, smooth and black and with a silver grip fashioned into a wolf’s head, she confiscates it from him the moment a _look_ crosses his face.

There’s also the endless supply of food Graves persuades his Aurors to bring him, secreted on their persons as expertly as any criminal. (When Seraphina confronts him about this he hands her a pastry in the shape of a niffler and proceeds to lecture her on the state of infirmary catering as she eats. She promises him, quite seriously, to add it to her list of concerns. _At least he’s eating_ , she thinks.)

For the constant stream of visitors, Seraphina is more forgiving. Charming as he is, Seraphina knows she is one of only a handful of Graves’ friends, none of whom are in the country. So she turns a blind eye, even encourages visits from a few key faces when her own work keeps her away. (The younger Goldstein is almost as eager as her sister to visit Graves, although she’s cowed when Seraphina warns her away from his mind. It’s clever of the girl not to ask how the President knows her secret).

Eventually a line is drawn when Seraphina walks into Graves’ room to find a dozen house elves each offering him hand-knitted clothing on bended knee.

-

The night Graves is released from the infirmary, Seraphina finds him sat outside her front door.

“I sent you home hours ago.” She tells him, blandly.

He huffs a short and empty laugh.

“Not sure it’s my home anymore, Sera.”

His trousers are wet at the hems, hair greasy, suit dishevelled. The tie she gave him that afternoon hangs loose around his neck, and bruises are beginning to form at his knuckles.

Seraphina appraises him.

“How bad’s the damage?”

His gaze is fixed on the cane dangling from his fingers and there’s a beat before he looks at her, drags red-rimmed eyes up and gives her a lopsided smile, head tilted.

“Touch and go, ma’am. Might be a write off.” Graves runs a rough hand through his hair, gaze slipping away and back, pauses, then: “My Father won’t be happy. That house has been in the family for 200 years… give or take.”

It’s a strange and familiar thing, deciding how best to pull a friend back together when they’ve fallen apart.

Seraphina slips her key into the lock, opens the door, and reaches a hand back to him. He takes hold of it like a man saying goodbye, fingers hooked in fingers.

“Come, it’s cold out here.” She pulls at his fingers until Graves has to choose between standing and letting go.

He stands and limps in after her.

-

He had gone to the cells, Graves tells her, later, slouching beside Seraphina in front of the living room fire, her toes burrowed under his thigh, nursing a tumbler of bourbon she’d pressed into his hand.

He looks sedate, like a dog sunning itself on the veranda.

“I didn’t do anything.” Graves says. And then, “I wanted to.”

He takes a slow sip of his drink, head tilted back against the couch. Seraphina watches the bob of his throat, silent.

“He knew I was there… Said he could sense me but the bastard probably just heard me talking to the guards.”

“Did you speak to him?” Seraphina asks then, urgent.

Graves rests his hand across her feet, thumb brushing along a vein, and tilts his head towards her, languid, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

“No.” He says, quietly.

Seraphina watches the bruises under his eyes darken in the firelight, imagines him standing alone in those shadowed cells, listening to whispers and taunts through a locked door. Not for the first time, she considers the prospect of reinstating capital punishment.

A beat passes, then two. Graves’ eyes are back on the fire. When it’s clear he won’t continue, Seraphina begins to shift.

“Where are you going?”

The question is innocent enough, but there it is again, in his gaze, the same alertness he had fixed on her when he thought she’d leave him alone in an empty infirmary room.

“Tea.” She holds up her mug, and takes his glass from him. “I think you’ll like my mother’s recipe.”

Seraphina can afford to humour him, at least for a little while longer.

-

In the morning Seraphina pushes orders through Congress.

By the end of the week, Grindelwald has lost his tongue.

-

As friends, Graves and Seraphina argue.

Strangely, as housemates, this does not change.

Seraphina isn’t sure what she’d thought would happen, perhaps that they would become attuned to one another, able to speak without words, traversing life from breakfast until dinner. Instead they are two tightly-coiled high-achievers under one roof, one trying to prevent a government shutdown, the other completely and utterly bored.

It’s a good morning when they haven’t hexed each other over breakfast.

Truthfully, Seraphina should have expected this; as Junior Aurors they had been in each other’s pockets, Seraphina with her sharp tongue, Graves with his sharp smile. The bullring had a running bet that, as she understands it, had been on which came first between the two of them: a punch up or a one night stand.

No money exchanged hands. (Seraphina is very good at covering her tracks).

At the suggestion of her house elf, Jinsy- or perhaps it’s a request, since house elves are not immune to bad atmospheres- Seraphina transfigures a spare room into a training area for them to burn off steam. Graves resists at first, and although he blames it on tiredness it’s clear he’s reluctant to find out how much ground has been lost, wasting away in his suitcase prison.

When Seraphina bundles him into the room, finally, half-asleep and covered in the sweat of a night terror, they find he hasn’t lost much at all. Some hand-eye coordination, perhaps, as her burnt curtains can attest, but not much besides.

Apparation, she tells him, will return to him eventually. Graves does not look convinced.

-

Eventually, the bedlam that is the fallout of the obscurus and the Grindelwald fiasco begins to dim.

Goldstein proves to be efficient at vetting MACUSA employees, a quality that earns her Seraphina’s praise- to the Auror’s badly concealed delight- if not yet a promotion. By the New Year, Graves is taken from medical leave and returns to work at the President’s side.

The Aurors are sympathetic, rattled at the knowledge of having mistaken a terrorist as their boss for months, but the Congress is not.

The media is not.

It comforts Seraphina to see Graves rebuff both sympathy and hostility alike, and she latches onto every sign that he’s still himself. (She is careful not to mention this to him).

The very second the media catches wind that the Director of Magical Security is returning to his duties, every case Graves has worked is aired like dirty laundry, every nuance of his character analysed on the wireless, every relative from his sister to the portrait of Gondolphus Graves hounded by journalists and private investigators looking for dramatic quotes to grace their front pages. Seraphina revokes all MACUSA passes from the media after Graves hexes a photographer who startles him in the men’s bathroom.

An obligatory letter of apology is sent to The New York Ghost. The photographer is sent to the hospital in a match box.

Despite all of the controversy that surrounds him, Graves settles back into his role as easily as a piece falling back into place. He doesn’t return to the Graves’ home, although Seraphina sends a team over to repair the damage, and after a month in Seraphina’s spare room he buys a downtown penthouse.

“I like the noise,” He says with a shrug when she visits and comments on it, “It’s alright, Sera.”

The gravel hasn’t left his voice in the months since he woke, a permanent rasp now, owed to damage. Apparently his vocal chords won’t heal for years, if at all.

She supposes it lends him a tone of gravitas.

Seraphina presses her forehead to a window and looks out at the lights, listens to the ever-present New York hubbub, white noise and police bells. She can feel him stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. When she turns around to face him, Graves shoves his hands into his trouser pockets and gives her a smile.

Later, Seraphina wonders when it was that his smiles changed.

Even a month at work, back in his life with his routine, doesn’t lessen the shadows under Graves’ eyes. That first night, the night she found him on her doorstep, her Mama’s special tea had sent him to sleep beside her on the couch. During his stay with her she brewed it often. When he moves into the penthouse she visits with all the necessary ingredients, herds him into his kitchen, and teaches him in the same style as her Mama did: with little patience and a firm hand.

“How’s the apartment?” Seraphina asks him one week, as they take their weekly meeting over coffee in her office.

Graves sighs quietly into his mug.

“Good.” He says, at length, “Big. I’m thinking of decorating.”

Seraphina hums into her drink. “I’ll always have the spare room at mine.”

Graves laughs at that, dark eyes glittering. A scar on his jaw, raised and pink, pulls taut as he grins wolfishly.

“Will you be my babysitter, Sera? What will the tabloids think?”

Seraphina rolls her eyes at him, and then scowls deeply at the memory of a paper she had read the week before.

“They already think we’re having a long-standing affair,” She turns her scowl on Graves when he winks at her, “God forbid they should run out of fuel for their gossip. _Stop_ that!”

Graves brings his eyebrows back down to their proper place and leans back in his chair. “Well, gossip is hardly our most pressing issue at the moment.”

The air sobers at this. Seraphina clasps her hands together on her desk and stares at him. He stares back, nonplussed.

“Have you been making the tea?” She asks.

A casual sniff, a glance at the window. Graves shrugs, looking distinctly boyish slouched in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and knees spread in a way no woman could.

“I have,” He says, eventually, rubbing a hand over his face, “There’s only so much that tea can do.”

Seraphina hums again, thoughtful. “You look awful-”

 “-You’re too kind, Sera-”

“-Like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“Nothing a quick glamour can’t fix.”

A long pause. Seraphina has a sudden thought.

“It may be beneficial,” She says, tapping her nails against her mug, “for you to look tired at the hearing next week.”

“Tired and weak?” Graves snorts.

“Not weak… Affected.”

“Sera-“

“Are you not affected?”

Graves stares at her. A long moment passes, before a slow smile begins to stretch his lips. He shakes his head, throws it back and looks to the ceiling as if looking for advice.

“Save me from these politicians.”

-

The day before the Grindelwald hearing, Seraphina calls the Goldstein sisters into her office.

Tina looks as serious as ever, shoulders back and hands clasped in front of her. Her sister, Queenie, dazzles Seraphina with a smile.

Not for the first time, she wonders how two people can look so different.

“I am not asking you to spy on your boss, Auror Goldstein.” Seraphina finds herself saying after she has made her request, “I need your professional opinion as his subordinate. The hearing is tomorrow and I need to know I can count on Mr Graves’ employees to defend him, not condemn him.”

“Oh.” Tina licks her lips, thinks for a moment, “He’s a good boss, Madame President. Always has been. All of us think so, I know that much.”

“And has he changed since his… detainment?”

“No, ma’am. He isn’t as active in the field, of course, on account of his knee. But…“ The Auror looks lost for words, “Maybe he’s a bit quieter? And he looks tired a lot.”

“He doesn’t like jazz anymore.” Queenie pipes up, and Seraphina blinks at her. The blonde smiles sheepishly, “I take coffee to everyone, you know? He used to listen to it in his office, even lent me a vinyl once. But he’s stopped.”

Seraphina thinks about this for a long moment, then files it away in her mind. She nods at Queenie. “Miss Goldstein, I wonder if I might use your not-so-inconsiderable talents tomorrow.”

-

She makes the Goldsteins swear never to tell anyone what they have done.

What she does to clear Graves’ name is against the code of the Presidency she knows, using a Legilimens to predict and sway the hearing’s outcome. But it’s not against _her_ moral code.

If there’s one thing Seraphina has learnt over the years, being true to office doesn’t always yield results.

Afterwards, her and Graves finish a bottle of firewhisky between them and spend the night on his apartment floor, sharing stories and laughter.

By dawn they are warm through to their bones, watching the sun rise in silence.

-

Grindelwald escapes and the government goes into lockdown.

After they send a security detail to the prison and secure the building, after the alarm and clamour of congress has been dealt with, after a dozen separate messages are sent with their fastest men to the Ministry of Magic, the ICW, and Albus Dumbledore, amongst others, Seraphina finds herself alone in her office with Graves.

“Abernathy.” She spits, like a curse. “How long’s the weasel been working with him?”

Graves is bent over a map on her desk, placeholders charmed to track the progress of their messengers.

He’s been remarkably calm through the chaos, she thinks. It was he who had ordered the halt of all magical transport in the country, and the monitoring of the port, cutting an imposing figure in the lobby as he barked orders.

“We’ll have to question the Wand Permit office.” He mutters, absently, rubbing at the scar on his jaw, “Queenie Goldstein and the like…”

Seraphina tracks the flickers of his eyes, the crease between his brows. When she puts a hand on his shoulder she realises he’s trembling.

“Percival…”            

At her touch Graves shudders, a deep tremor that racks his body like a tree caught in a gale. Whatever mental blockades there are holding him upright disintegrate, in stages, and then all at once.

Alarmed, Seraphina summons the nearest chair.

“ _Sit down_.” She says, sharply.

Graves doesn’t seem to hear her. He is a man drowning, lungs heaving for a breath that won’t come, hand grasping at his tie. Seraphina eases him back until he falls into the chair, bats his hand away and loosens the tie for him, undoes the button at his throat with deft fingers.

They are like this, Graves, pale and shuddering for breath, Seraphina, kneeling at his side, cold hands on his face, his neck, when Tina Goldstein bursts in.

“Madame President!”

“ _Out!_ ” Seraphina barks over her shoulder, burning eyes turned on the Auror.

Beside her, Graves seems to gather himself at the interruption, only to bury his head in his hands, elbows on knees.

Goldstein hesitates for only a moment, “Madame President. Sir. MACUSA is compromised.”

-

Fifty miles down a South Carolina dirt track and Graves hasn’t said a word.

It’s not as if their ride, an old black man named George who reminds Seraphina of one of her loose-tongued uncles, would expect anything out of the ordinary, pulling over for the ‘married’ couple. Never mind the burning heap of wreck that had been their car. Never mind the funny way they dress. Never mind they can’t tell him how it happened, where they’re from, or where they’re going. George has already told her, several times now, ladies like her make him think of taking his own girls up north.

People keep their secrets. Lord knows how many times Seraphina’s own Mama would tell her, folks from the north keep theirselves to theirselves.

There’s nothing wrong with fulfilling a stereotype every now and then.

The look on George’s face, however, when the white man lets the black woman sit shotgun, tells Seraphina he might be reassessing the situation.

“Brothers ain’t good enough for you, huh?” George rumbles.

Seraphina tilts her head back into the sun, laughter like wind chimes. There’s a silver band fastened around her ring finger, polished and bright in the light, and she wears it easily enough that the old man almost believes the two of them are married. Dark eyes flickers over to her from the backseat, indifferent. Graves’ own band is dull, as ill-fitting as the coat he wears.

“Percy and I go way back. Helped each other out of more than a few tight spots.”

“You been married long, ma’am?”

“Ten years next spring.” Seraphina looks back at her ‘husband’ but his eyes are on the tree line, “Couldn’t let him go off to war without something to come back to.”

“That right? You fight in the war, Mr Percy?” The old man’s reward is another glance and a faint jerk that could be anything from a nod to a shrug. “Lose any men?”

No reply. Not so much as a twitch of response, eyes out of the window. Seraphina only looks out of her own window when George raises his eyebrows at her.

“My boy was there. Still is, in fact.” George watches Graves in the rearview, one eye on the road, “You see any negro bodies in the trenches?”

Graves shifts uncomfortably, collar chafing against pale skin. A bead of sweat disappears below his chin. In the rich glow of the southern sun, the scars along his jaw and throat stand out like silver threads.

No doubt the old man has noticed them. Seraphina’s sorry she spoke.

“I crossed paths with the Hellfighters.” Graves says, simply.

George hums. After a beat, Seraphina realises he’s watching her from the corner of his eyes and she turns, dazzles him with another smile.

“Is it much further, George?”

-

Seraphina is one question away from hexing the old man by the time they arrive. He means well, she’s sure, interrogating her ‘husband’ with all of the distrust of a father. But being in such close proximity with a no-maj has her on edge the entire journey.

And Graves doing his damnedest to brood in the back _definitely_ does not help.

The second the wagon clatters to a stop he’s out of the car, hand in his pocket, waiting for her to get rid of the old man.

“Thank you so very much, George.” Seraphina takes the man’s hand in both of hers and beams at him, “We really do appreciate your help.”

George dips his head politely, “It was no thing, Miss Sarah. Now, I hope you and your fella here manage to get where you’re going.”

“Oh, all we need is to find a phone and call my brother, have him come pick us up.”

There’s no way to describe the look Seraphina turns on Graves, then, but a lesser man would flinch. Graves only blinks at her. There’s an obvious stiffness in the way he holds himself as he transfers his cane to the other side and limps forward, hand outstretched.

“You take care.” He tells the old man with a bland smile. George only nods as he shakes the offered hand, eyes lingering for a little too long on Graves’ wrist, pink ropes of skin peeking out from beneath his shirtsleeve.

When George has climbed back into his wagon and disappeared down the dirt road, leaving them by the roadside of a drab little town, Graves turns to Seraphina.

“Percy, Madame President?”

He wrinkles his nose in a way that borders on insubordination.

Seraphina turns from the road to the town, all the while fixing him with a steely gaze. There’s a smidge of dirt on his temple, a result of their little mishap, and the white of his collar looks damp with sweat. His coat is dusty, boots turned brown. The briefcase he had left Manhattan with is a pile of ash in a ditch fifty miles north.

Yet somehow, despite how hard the high sun beats down on them, he hasn’t unfastened a single button or loosened his tie.

Graves holds her gaze.

“In future, dear _husband_ , I expect you to act with a little affection,” She raises an eyebrow, watches him sway back as she leans forward to brush some dust from his shoulder, “rather than sulk in the back as if the divorce papers are on their way.”

Abruptly Seraphina turns away, stalking towards the scattering of buildings before them. There’s a sigh behind her as Graves begin to follow.

“And don’t act as though you’ve never been called Percy before.” She tosses over her shoulder.

The frown he gives her threatens to engulf his eyes with his brows.

“A no-maj town, Sera?” Graves scowls at their surroundings, “We could have managed without the old man.”

“Perhaps with a car, yes…”

“A portkey?”

“And have every Grindelwald follower know where we are? We couldn’t very well scour the black market for one.”

“And why not?”

Seraphina stops, appalled. “We have an example to set for our subordinates!”

Graves snorts as he overtakes her and leaves the reply at that.

-

Nanpantan is not a busy town.

The place seems to consist entirely of a single street, with offshoots snaking off onto dead ends, two quiet rows of storefronts, the odd tree or bush, and not a single payphone in sight. A lazy breeze picks up a layer of dust and litter at their feet, strewing dirt across the sidewalk.

Seraphina takes Graves’ arm as they walk the main street, at once glad for and unnerved by the quiet.

“Charming little town.” She murmurs to him.

Graves hums in agreement, cane clicking against the sidewalk. He hasn’t spoken much at all since he blew up the car. _I only meant to turn the radio off_ , he’d growled.

Maybe Seraphina should have taken Queenie Goldstein seriously about his aversion to jazz.

“So,” Graves says, quietly, “We find somewhere to stay the night. Then on to Atlanta in the morning.”

High-pitched squeals and laughter colour the air as they pass a group of children, playing hopscotch in the alleyway with gap-toothed grins.

“We’re not too far from the Congaree River.” Seraphina muses, and Graves gives her a sidelong glance, eyebrow raised, “There’s a forest there… My mother used to take us to see the fireflies every year.”

That was a long time ago.

Graves says nothing but his arm squeezes her hand against his side, briefly.

Halfway down the main street and still no sighting of so much as an inn, they pause outside the dusty windows of a convenience store. Releasing his arm Seraphina turns on the spot, taking in the surroundings with a heavy sigh. Graves watches her with tired eyes. She feels a mite guilty when she sees how heavily he’s leaning into his cane.

“Maybe we find a payphone?” He says, and purses his lips, “Or send Tina a- _oomph_.”

This sound is the result of a little girl, dusky-skinned with dark hair in ringlets, darting out from an alley and colliding hard enough with the wizard that his cane gives out beneath him and sends him sprawling to the ground. The child in turn goes flying backwards into a crate of cabbage.

Seraphina hurries to her side, ignoring Graves entirely.

“Oh my- are you alright, honey?” She picks the girl up and sets her on her feet, brushing the dust from her dress.

A single green apple rolls along the concrete and comes to a slow stop by Graves’ thigh. The little girl’s eyes are fixated on it, even as she tries to inch away. Graves looks from her to the apple and back, and begins to push himself up with a barely suppressed grimace.

“Is this yours?” He asks, gruff voice made soft, and holds out the apple.

And then, something very strange happens.

The little girl does not reach to take the apple, Seraphina is sure, nor does Graves hand it to her. One second it’s in his hand and the next it’s in hers. Before they can process what has happened, the child is already scampering away down the street.

“Strange.” Seraphina mutters.

Graves only grunts, straightens his coat after Seraphina pulls him to his feet, and pretends he had never been on the ground in the first place as an angry, ruddy faced man, glasses askew, pushes roughly past Seraphina in pursuit of the girl.

With a single twitch of her finger, Seraphina has the man’s trousers halfway down his calves and sends him into the cabbage.

“Oh! My word!” Graves throws his hands in the air and feigns complete alarm, suddenly full of energy, “ _Careful_ , sir.”

Seraphina suppresses a bark of laughter as the wizard moves to pull the winded man to his feet, in the process elbowing him in the eye socket, flinging his glasses halfway across the street, and almost sending the both of them back onto the ground together.

“Suspenders really aren’t reliable any more, sir, I recommend a belt.” Graves finally sets him upright, “Is this your wallet?”

Having reached a level of anger rendering him incapable of speech, the ruddy man’s throat works silently. He pulls his trousers up with shaking hands and stumbles on down the street.

Finally, to add to the chaos, the storekeeper joins them, clutching his hat at the mess.

“ _My cabbages!_ ”

Both Seraphina and Graves step back as the storekeeper scrambles after his cabbages, cursing all the while.

The two exchange a look.

“Excuse me, sir.” Seraphina asks. The storekeeper ignores her. “Is there anywhere nearby for a traveller to stay?”

No answer. Graves’ jaw twitches, scar pulsing.

“Hey.” Finally, a response. The man looks up from his cabbages, eyes travelling from the toes of Graves’ boots to dark brows pressed into a straight line. “There any hotels in town?”

“Sure are.” The storekeep stands, his back to Seraphina, cabbages clutched to his chest, “Aren’t a whole lotta rooms going free.”

“We only need the one.”

At ‘we’ the no-maj turns to peer at Seraphina. He takes a step back, drops the cabbages into an empty crate and wipes his hands on his trousers.

“She ain’t allowed anywhere.” He raps a knuckle on a sign in the window that reads ‘White Only’, “You not from ‘round here?”

Graves lip begins to curl, but Seraphina’s hand on his arm stops him from stepping forward.

Wizards and witches are not as bigoted as the no-maj, not when magic-kind of all colours and creeds boast communities as powerful as each other, but it is impossible to exist in this world insulated from hate.

Seraphina knows this, all too well.

She’d been taught this long before fear of the ‘ _other’_ dogged her rise to power.

Graves, on the other hand, is a born and bred New Yorker, and pure-blood to boot. All of his experiences with Jim Crow are limited to big cities where magic communities thrive and the reach of no-maj laws are faint. He does not know this world like she does.

Truthfully, after all these years in New York, Seraphina is tempted to pull out her wand and plague the entire town. She could obliviate this place from existence and the world would be none the wiser.

As always, as she must, she composes herself. She musters warmth into a smile for Graves, and squeezes his forearm.

“It’s okay, baby.”

Her eyes tell him, _do not fight my battles_.

Graves nods once and looks away.

Seraphina turns back to the storekeeper, and in the voice Mama taught her to use wherever the white folk are quick to anger, she asks, “Is there a coloureds lodgings here, sir?”

-

The coloureds inn is, to put it mildly, grossly insufficient.

Between their need to be low-key, Graves’ current inability to apparate, and Seraphina’s immediate and complete fondness for the inn’s owner, an elderly Jamaican lady who tells them to call her Miss Ella and lets them use her landline, they decide the situation could be much worse.

After dinner, mouths burning from Miss Ella’s love for chillies, they settle into their room and go through their plan.

It’s simple enough:

  1. Commandeer a car
  2. Meet the others in Atlanta
  3. Establish a base of operations
  4. Take back MACUSA



Graves snorts at this last one, spread eagle on top of the bed, fully clothed and with an arm slung over his eyes.

“Bit vague, isn’t it?” He rumbles, “It’s almost as if we don’t have a plan.”

Seraphina glares at him from her place at the vanity, then turns back to the mirror when she realises he isn’t looking. (A small part of her is deciding whether or not to cast a cleaning spell on the room).

“Plans are useless,” She says with an air of grandeur, quoting words she’s heard many a time, “Planning is not.”

At this Graves lifts his head, eyebrows furrowed. She watches his reflection in the mirror as she unwinds her headwrap, innocence affected on her face.

“As I recall, the last time I used those words you threatened to put me on indefinite leave.”

Later, when they have exhausted their list of all possible outcomes, all of their resources, all of their allies, each list shorter than the last, Seraphina kicks off her shoes and collapses onto the bed beside him.

The bed is small, but they’ve shared smaller.

When Seraphina turns towards him, Graves’ eyes are already closed. When her nose brushes his shoulder, his breath ghosts against her hair. When she touches his arm he lifts it for her, pulls her in until her face is tucked into the crook of his neck.

When she rests her hand on his chest, he twines their fingers together.

-

By morning, Seraphina smells like him.

If his sleep was riddled with nightmares, she doesn’t know it.

-

The storekeeper is much more agreeable when Graves loses his patience and leaves him drooling on the counter with a single tap.

“He’ll think he fell asleep.” He huffs at Seraphina’s look, “Pass me that coffee can.”

“We have money to pay for this.”

Graves only shrugs, and Seraphina is reminded of the wad of cash he had handed Miss Ella before they left the inn.

“…do you not know how to use no-maj money?”

He freezes in the middle of stuffing an oversized umbrella into his pocket and bristles.

“Of _course_ I do, Madame President.”

“Hmm. Put that away, we won’t need it where we’re going.”

“With respect, one always needs an umbrella.”

Seraphina snags a single piece of candy (one small weakness she will allow herself) and follows behind him as they leave the store, listening to his small stream of mutterings about the common sense of Southerners-

“Wait.” She walks straight into Graves’ back, stopped in his tracks.

For the first time since they arrived in the sleepy town, there are people.

There are… a lot of people.

“What’s going on?” Seraphina steps out from behind Graves.

He doesn’t answer, shrewd eyes on the crowd. They’re a strange sort: men, women, and children of all ages, moving together as a rough tide down the street, enveloping any stragglers they pass into their throng. Some look like families on their way to the theatre, others like gangs of good ol’ boys.

It’s no parade.

“I think,” Graves murmurs, head tilted towards her, “this is a mob…”

For a short second Seraphina cannot breathe, head emptied of anything but rage and blood and murder, _murder._ Flashes of rotten limbs swinging in the breeze, screams and prayers falling to red-tinged dirt-

-and then the thought of all that is ahead of them, death and more, brings her back down slowly, the haze leeching away behind a steel mask.

Graves watches her carefully.

“Time for us to leave.” Seraphina tells him.

His eyes narrow. She is a lowered eyebrow away from pulling rank when, in the hubbub of the mob, she spots a small figure flitting between the rest.

The child. The little thief.

“Sera.” Graves warns. He’s seen the girl, too, and is already turning with the flow.

Seraphina hurries to keep step with him, wondering, distantly, how a man with a cane can keep such a pace.

They follow the crowd as it pours down the street and spills out onto a clearing, a place where the town seems to end with no warning and street becomes grass becomes forest. There, in the clearing, stands a large tree.

And from the tree hangs a man.

-

Seraphina has been too long off the beat.

She has never liked this. There’s a reason she became a politician.

The man, he couldn’t be saved. The very second Seraphina had seen him, swinging in the breeze, head bent, she knew as such.

But the child…

A mental note is added to their plan:

  1. Increase public spending on the care of no-maj born children.



The man must have been her Father; for any untrained wizard or witch, any child, their power is beholden to their emotions. It’s lucky they’re passing through, her and Graves, or Nanpantan would be nothing more than ashes and dust.

As it is, it takes Seraphina hours to obliviate the entire town.

-

The little girl’s name is Ava.

Seraphina extracts the name from one of the townspeople, comatose on the ground. There’s more: snatches of the girl roaming the streets with her father, townhouse gossip about an absent mother, but all of it coloured with the distrust of an ignorant mind.

The rest is written in the girl’s skin, so like Seraphina’s, deep brown in the sun, drying ash at the knees and elbows. Too dark for this country, too light for her father’s.

One look at Graves, cane clenched in white knuckles, and Seraphina leaves the child with him. The two are a good match. Graves, man of few words, Ava, yet to speak. The little girl follows him to the curb, stands silently in front of him when he sits and takes his hands in hers, small and delicate as they rest palms up on top of his, and looks down on them with all of the solemn concentration of youth as Graves murmurs to her.

That Graves is a natural with children is of little surprise to Seraphina.

Her back to them, Seraphina makes the rounds. She obliviates and replaces memories of magic and fire with gas explosions and oils leaks and whatever standard alibis MACUSA were wont to use. By the time she’s finished, the sun is low on the horizon and Ava has fallen asleep in Graves’ lap.

“What now?” Graves asks, when Seraphina approaches. He looks world-weary and has done for a long while, hollowed out by more than this disaster of a road trip.

Seraphina reaches out and runs a hand through his hair, mussed from the chaos.

“You need another haircut.” She murmurs, absently.

He cocks an eyebrow at her. She sighs.

“I guess we’d better find a car.”

-

Despite everything, Graves insists on driving.                                                                                               

“I won’t touch the radio.” He grumbles at her look.

Ava looks set to complain when Graves loosens her arms from around his neck and hands her off to Seraphina, nose wrinkling and lower lip trembling, but there must be something soft in the witch’s face because the little girl soon settles on her hip. In the car she sits upright on Seraphina’s lap, in turn staring out the window, the windscreen, back at Seraphina, and over at Graves.

“You’re a curious little thing, aren’t you, baby girl?” Seraphina muses aloud, and is rewarded with a shy gaze.

Darkness falls too soon, branches and grass flickering past view in the dim glare of the headlights.

Ava falls asleep in her lap and, between the muggy southern heat and the soft patter of gravel against tyres, Seraphina struggles against following. She jolts at the touch of Graves’ hand on her knee.

“Sleep.” He murmurs, “You need it.”

Seraphina slips away.

When she wakes, they are at the Congaree.

Graves is sat silent in the driver’s seat, looking out of his window at the stars. Beyond the windscreen lies the boundaries of the forest, a sudden threshold of trees so tall their tops seem to melt into the night sky.

Seraphina’s Mama used to tell her stories about these trees, about the forest dwellers of Congaree, weaving fiction by fire light.

It feels like she’s home already.

“Well, this isn’t Atlanta.” She says, blandly.

He smirks.

“You mentioned the fireflies.” Graves nods his head towards the treeline, “As luck would have it, it’s firefly season. Or so Miss Ella says.”

Seraphina stares at him.

If her stare worries him, he doesn’t show it. “We’re not meeting the Goldsteins until the morning. A night spent here’s no different than a night spent there.” He purses his lips, thoughtful, “Or it _is_ different. There’s more to see here.”

She can’t help it, Seraphina cracks up, a slow bubble that begins in her chest as a chuckle and erupts into a laugh that startles Ava awake. Anyone would look at her and think her mad, but Graves grins with her, eyes twinkling.

“Come,” He says and steps out of the car, twirling his cane like a ringmaster before a circus tent.

Ava, rubbing blearily eyes with a small fist, latches onto Graves’ hand the second she’s set down. Together they walk deep into the forest, the little one between them, Seraphina’s wand and the moon lighting their way. The wilderness hums around them, thickets of shrub pawing at the base of tall trees, tangling around their ankles with each step.

“That’s a Loblolly,” Seraphina bends to whisper to Ava, wand pointed towards a trunk in front of them. She waves towards another in the distance, seeing the awe in the girl’s eyes. “And that one there’s a Sweetgum.”

Soon the undergrowth moves.

Seraphina extinguishes her wand and motions for Graves to stop. Then she sits on a fallen log and pulls Ava up to sit beside her, gestures for him to join them, silent. Around them the air begins to flicker, like sunlight dancing across glass. The leaves breathe, awake with chirps and rustles as the lights appear, disappear, appear, one at a time, and then in a thousand places at once. Centuries ago, long before magical-kind and non-magical-kind were separate, when no soul crossed a bridge without payment for the troll, and grandmothers knitted silver into the linings of children’s cloaks, it was said that forests were the dominions of faeries.

When a young and wide-eyed Seraphina had sat here shoulder to shoulder with her brothers and watched a light-show more dazzling than any celebration, she had believed it.

-

They spend the night there, protected and warmed by spells, comforted by the fireflies.

A simple transfiguration spell softens the dirt below the log and they nestle there, pressed against its bark, Ava swaying drowsily between them. Sleep does not come as easily to Seraphina as it had in the car, but it comes to her all the same. She wakes throughout the night, chased by dreams that leak into reality for the span of a single breath.

Each time she opens her eyes Graves is sat awake, Ava curled into his side, face sliding in and out of the darkness with each wink of light.

-

It isn’t far to Atlanta in the morning.

They arrive as the city market is in full swing, the streets bustling with families and grocers and artists and more. Atlanta is not an anomaly in the world, a place where magic and non-magic brush shoulders in all walks of life. The no-maj are simply unaware of it. Here, just as in New York or Paris or London, back doors on corner roads lead to places reserved for the magical. They use one such door and step seamlessly into the Atlanta Troll Market. Seraphina leads them through the crowd, Ava’s hand in hers as Graves limps behind, eyes scouring the faces around them.

At the far side of the market, tucked behind a fishmonger’s stall, the Goldstein sisters sit drinking coffee.

Unsurprisingly, and frustratingly, Queenie looks far more like she _belongs_.

“Goldsteins.” Seraphina greets, then waves a sharp hand when Tina looks ready to stand to attention.

“Ma’am. Sir.” The Auror replies, and then, surprised: “That’s a child!”

“Very observant of you, Goldstein. Ava here will be joining us until such a time we find a suitable home for her.”

It must be a strange sight, she imagines, their president and their boss, stern-faced, dusty, and with a child clutching their coat tails. At the mention of her name, Ava, who at some point had secreted herself into the folds of Graves’ coat, peeks out at the sisters.

“Hi, honey!” Queenie coos with a small wave. At her smile, bright and genuine, Ava returns a shy one of her own.

A waitress bustles over and takes their orders, two coffees and an orange juice, as the three sit down with the Goldsteins. When she returns, minutes later, it’s with a colouring book that keeps the little girl happy, perched on Graves’ knee.

“She has magic,” Graves says by way of explanation.

The Goldsteins are looking at him like the sun is shining out of his ass and Seraphina has to resist rolling her eyes. (She’s told Graves many times: something about a bachelor with a child drives women mad.)

“Report, Goldsteins.” She orders.

It’s a whole half hour later, somewhere between a goblin incident in Chicago and hexing a Senior Auror in Virginia, when Seraphina spots a familiar face peeking out from behind a cake stall.

And all hell breaks loose.

-

They must have been followed. Or the Goldsteins were. Or somebody betrayed them.

A thousand possibilities are bouncing through Seraphina’s head, cluttering her mind even as she shoots off curse after curse, spins to duck behind a car. One of the Goldsteins? No. It must have been someone else, and all possibilities lead to the conclusion that their safe house is no longer safe. Not if a secret keeper has turned coat.

Where then?

Seraphina throws herself from behind the car as a _reducto_ blows it into the air. With a flourish, a rope shoots from her wand and wraps around the perpetrator, lifts him and throws him through a shop front. A moment later a witch, another stranger, takes his place.

The first three curses Seraphina rebounds with a shield, and before the fourth reaches her she apparates away, reappearing behind a shopfront window crouched beside the Goldsteins.

“ _We’re outnumbered!_ ” She hisses, snatching Tina’s wrist when the witch almost hexes her in surprise.

“We weren’t followed, ma’am, I’m sure of it.” Queenie whispers back, and Seraphina believes her.

Ava is tucked under the Legilimen’s arm, looking remarkably calm for the situation even as the window above them shatters, turning to dust at Seraphina’s command. Beyond the curses flung their way, shattering against the bar, the till, the tables, there’s the sounds of a duel in the street. Graves is out there, still. He and Seraphina had covered the Goldstein’s retreat, being the closest to their attackers, but had been separated quickly.

“Auror Goldstein, have you ever been a secret keeper?”

“No, ma’am?” Tina looks confused at the question.

Seraphina taps her on the forehead, hard. Goldstein’s confusion clears as the information manifests in her mind.

“Go to the safehouse, _do not_ stray outside the boundaries, and follow my instructions _exactly_. Do you understand me?” Both Goldsteins nod. Seraphina places a hand on Ava’s cheek, briefly. “Good. Keep her safe. Go.”

She apparates away before the sisters can so much as nod. The two assailants, still throwing curses at the coffee shop, yelp in alarm when Seraphina materializes between them but have no time for a counter before she blows them both into a wall and binds them, unconscious.

Down the street, a car bursts into flames.

 _Graves_.

Seraphina apparates onto a rooftop, spots him taking cover at the mouth of an alley. She apparates again, pulls her incorporeal form in tight and brushes through Graves’ hair ( _it’s me_ ) before materializing behind him.

“I wondered where you’d got off to.” He huffs, eyes still on the street.

A curse misses him narrowly, shooting past his ear.

“I sent the Goldsteins to Savannah with Ava.”

Graves glances over his shoulder at her.

“Savannah? This must be serious.” A stranger apparates into the alley beside them and is promptly blasted back against the brick wall. “You go. I’ll meet you all there.”

Seraphina snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous-”

“It’s _alright_ , Sera.”

 “-We’ll find another car!”

He looks pointedly at the line of burning cars on the street. Whatever retort he has dies in his throat when a sudden silence falls on the street, and a single, cold, British voice calls out.

“Is that you, my dear Percival? It’s been too long!”

-

Later, much later, when Seraphia chronicles their journey in a report, she will hesitate at this part.

The sudden appearance of Gellert Grindelwald in a street in Atlanta.

The President and the Director of Magical Security trapped in an alleyway.

After much deliberation she glosses over the truth. Percival Graves did not, in fact, snap at the sound of Grindelwald’s voice. He did not, in fact, attempt to engage Grindelwald in a duel.

What happened, she will write, is that Seraphina Picquery had heard the dark wizard’s voice, realised they were outmatched, grabbed Graves’ arm, and promptly disapparated.

It was her mistake. That is all.

-

Percival Graves is a heavy man.

When they materialize in the grounds of her family home, surrounded by nothing but trees, fields, and a lake stretching from a crooked jetty, for a short second Seraphina is convinced they’ve made it in one piece.

But then Graves is sagging against her and there’s blood and “ _Mercy Lewis GOLDSTEINS HELP US._ ”

Seraphina manages to drag him twitching and moaning halfway across the field by the time Tina reaches them, sprinting. Together they carry him, an arm each slung over their shoulders, all the way down the well-trodden path, up the porch, and into the house before the younger Goldstein appears, hurrying down the stairs.

“What happened?” Queenie asks, alarmed.

Seraphina and Tina ease Graves down onto the sofa.

“He’s been splinched.” She waves away any questions when the two sisters look to her. “Queenie, go to the kitchen, there’s dittany in the cupboard to the right of the stove. Tina, help me get his shirt off.”

Graves is still conscious, skin waxy and face twisted, sweat shining on his cheeks as he shivers against the leather. Were he in a better place, he might protest at how quick Seraphina is to slice through his waistcoat. As it is he lets out a grunt of disapproval.

Seraphina begins to mutter to him as they work.

“It’s alright, Perce” and “shh, hang on,” and “oh for- I’ll buy you a whole new suit.” This last is growled as she rips through his clothes, undershirt, and all.

The whole ordeal feels too familiar, uttering the same half-empty comforts she had whispered all those months ago, sat beside his wasting body in a cold infirmary room.

“ _Queenie_.”

“Found it!” Footsteps clatter from the kitchen.

Tina helps Seraphina push aside the ruined clothing and reveal exposed muscle spiralling Graves’ torso, blood bubbling from crevices between tendon and flesh. The second Queenie reaches them with the dittany Seraphina has it unstoppered, held over the wounds, and applies it liberally. She repeats the process twice before it takes effect, the sizzling audible even above Graves’ groans as the flesh begins to regrow, tissue knitting back together.

Eventually, Graves lets out a long, shuddering breath. His hand finds Seraphina’s, blood slick between their palms.

“Sorry.” He tells her.

“Sap.” She says.

-

Contrary to what most people believe, Seraphina had, in fact, noticed something was _off_ with ‘Graves’ during those months Grindelwald impersonated him.

There were times, more than a few, where she would wake and feel as though she’d forgotten something. It was like trying to grasp onto a dream as it faded, small, pale snatches of memories that didn’t quite piece together. She should have realised sooner, really.

It wasn’t until after Grindelwald was unmasked that she realised he had been tampering with her memory.

It made sense, of course. Anybody else he could fire or reassign once they became suspicious of nuances that weren’t Graves’, tics and turns of phrase unfamiliar on an American tongue, shared memories that he claimed to have forgotten. Seraphina, however… she was the President, and one of his oldest friends. If it weren’t for how busy she had been, between the ICW and the obscurus, and how distant she had been from ‘Graves’ because of it, Seraphina is sure there would be chunks of her memory missing.

But there had been a point, a turning moment, slumped in her office chair after a meeting with Mama’s doctor, when Grindelwald had come to her in Graves’ skin and comforted her.

“It’s alright, Sera.” He had said, and poured her a coffee, exactly how she likes it, “You should go and see her.”

It isn’t for months, reading through the real Graves’ report, when she realises _that_ moment had coincided with the day Grindelwald broke through to his mind.

-

Graves finds her by the water.

She’s singing to herself.

Ava stands ankle deep in the water, dressed in a yellow frock left behind by one of Seraphina’s nieces and watching the fish dig between her toes. The lake is small by any standard. It’s said to have been willed into being by Seraphina’s great great uncle, when her family had first come to these lands. He had dug down to the lake bed in a single gesture, and when the rains had come they had funnelled down and filled the fissure. Ever since she had been able, much earlier than any normal child, Seraphina had swum in its waters with her brothers, their Mama washing clothes by the shore as they splashed and propelled themselves with newly honed magic. There had been no age limit on magic, then.

Years ago, more years than she would like to admit, Seraphina had brought Percival Graves and his sister here, fresh-faced youths shedding Ilvermony robes in the spring sun.

“You,” she calls out to him, “should not be up.”

Graves gives her a wry smile. He has found a shirt from somewhere, probably dug up from one of her brother’s rooms, all of whom are twice as broad and twice as tall. It hangs from his frame, rustling in the breeze as he picks his way over to her. When he sees Ava, staring quietly at him from the shallows, he chuckles and holds out his hands, catches her when she runs to him and throws her in the air. The little girl chortles with glee, peals of laughter echoing across the water.

“As comfortable as your couch is, I woke up stiff.” Graves says, when he has put Ava down and sent her to the house for food, “It’s been a long while since I last visited your home.”

He ambles towards Seraphina and settles down on the ground beside her, back pressed against the rock she’s sat on.

“You look… better.” She tells him, slowly. When she motions to his shirt he obliges and lifts it for her appraisal. The skin across his stomach is pink and raw, but with more dittany by the week’s end it’ll be only another scar to add to his collection.

“Am I gonna live, Doc?”

Seraphina swats him on the arm.

“That song you were singing,” Graves says, when he has stopped laughing, “What is it?”

Seraphina is slow to respond. “My mother used to sing it to us as children.”

“Could you sing it for me?”

She snorts and looks at him but he only cocks his head, impassive.

(In a distant memory he is trembling in a bed, crying out for relief-)

“I’ve sung it for you before.”

Being splinched has done wonders for Graves’ health, if only for the forced respite that came with it. The shadows under his eyes are less, now, and the Georgian sun shines against the black of his hair, kisses the pale of his cheeks and infuses colour into his skin. He smiles at her, faintly, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I thought so.” He says, and tips his head back against the rock. Seraphina cards her fingers through his hair, watches his eyelashes as his eyes flutter shut. “I could hear you… wherever my mind was trapped, I could hear you.” He lets out a short bark of laughter. “And Tina, too, I think. She kept talking about a bakery.”

Seraphina smiles at this, glances back at the house and the smoke rising from the chimney where Queenie Goldstein is putting on a roast. The others will be arriving soon, her brothers and all those who Graves and Seraphina trusts, all those who the Goldsteins trust. (Seraphina has been remarkably permissive about their suggestions but is still sceptical at the mention of one Newton Scamander, to be ferried in by Tina).

There will be many strangers at the Picquery home.

“I’m sorry, Sera,” Graves says, suddenly, quietly. “About your Mother. She’s gone, isn’t she?”

Seraphina’s hand stills in his hair.

“I was suspicious of him, you know.” Is out of her mouth before she can think to stop herself, “The first few months he just erased whatever memories he needed… But when Mama got sick, he _knew_ what to say and I just- I stopped questioning. I thought he was you.”

Graves is looking at her now, dark eyes flickering between her own, lips pressed closed. He’s silent for a long time.

“It’s alright, Sera.” He says, finally, and something in Sera tears at the words. It must be written on her face; Graves looks away and sighs, long and deep, and rubs both hands over his face.

Seraphina sinks down from the rock to slump next to him. She can hear Ava laughing in the distance, Queenie applauding. The waters of the lake ripple against the shore. In the distance, the _pop_ s of apparitions and the voices of Tina and the Brit.

Seraphina takes hold of Graves’ arm and rests her cheek on his shoulder. He rests his own on the top of her head. She bumps her knee against his, hard.

“It isn’t alright,” She tells him.

He only laughs.

 

 

.

**Author's Note:**

> "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
> 
> Hope you liked this, it may well become a series in the future with the inclusion of Newt, Jacob, etc. 
> 
> As always, your feedback is fuel.


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